you were the only one
by chi-of-ink
Summary: Post-game, OvanHaseo, or IRL MasatoRyou. One-shot. He was going to embrace him. He sort of lost his nerve, after really seeing him. But if he wanted, he could close the space between them and discover what that would have felt like to have grasped someone who wasn't going to disappear.


Playing this game again after years, suddenly my fanworks become G.U. :) Ryou Misaki and Masato Indou are the canon real-life selves behind Haseo and Ovan. Chigusa is the player behind Atoli. Intended as a game epilogue of sorts, post-Forest of Pain (play the extra scene with Ovan first!). No real warnings except a blink-and-you'll-miss it referene to self-harm.

From what I could gather, Ryou lives close enough to Shino to visit her in the hospital on a daily basis, and it seems(?) to be canon that Masato does as well. For realism's sake I've located Chigusa futher away (it seems too perfect that they all happen to live within the same area, meeting in a MMO) So I'm sticking with that headcanon here.

Slash, you know the drill. I'll check back after I finish the game for mistakes, but enjoy.

* * *

"It's a text-message," He explains. It almost sounds silly because it's game talk all over again and this time, they're not in the game. They're on a patio in evening sun, where Shino's left them to themselves as she tends inside to her garden. Here it's not Haseo, just Ryou, skinny and seventeen with a sweating glass of ice-tea forgotten by his hip. And not an arm's length beside him, Ovan, now just Masato, tall and dark and gentle in the red-gold light.

"You can text her," he says, smiling a little like there's a joke there that Ryou can't understand. "I won't object." It's strange seeing Ovan as someone so human, so _normal. _When Shino had first introduced them, he wanted to sprint, tackle him to the floor in the same embrace he had been unable to finish within The World - only the shift had thrown him off. He was still tall, but more open without the scarf and heavy armor to hide behind. Still handsome, but flawed like any other man - his hair shorter, mused by the wind, a tiny scar standing out on his jaw. His glasses were laying slightly crooked. When Ryou pointed it out, teasing, Masato had only fixed him with this _look, _all commanding and stern until his mouth had quirked into quiet amusement and a grateful thank you.

He was_ going_ to embrace him. He sort of lost his nerve, after that.

"How do you know it's Chigusa?" Ryou mumbles back hotly, although of course Masato had assumed right. Atoli had been texting him pretty regularly for quite a while, wanting to know how their visit was going, eagerly looking forward to traveling down and saying hello herself. Next month was a realistic goal. Ryou had already circled a few maybe-then days on his calendar, hopeful for Chigusa's long awaited visit.

Masato leans back on his hands. It makes him look broader, somehow, but the gesture seems so youthful that Ryou has to calculate again - _twenty six, he's practically an old man, isn't he _- before clearing his head. "Just a guess. The right one, it seems." He tilts his head a little, wondering, and Ryou starts to recoil before he realizes just what sort of face he's making.

"Don't you love her?" Masato says, wholly honest. There's no hint of accusation, but Ryou bristles as if it's a trap, one of Chigusa's last texts coming quickly to mind _(I guess I thought it might scare you off when we met and you saw! They may be permanent but I promise they're old and all healed because I'm all better now. I promise!)_

"I love Atoli," he defends, and it makes his throat tight despite the little half-smile Ovan- no, _Masato_ is giving him, the one that means he's trying to apologize for something, somehow, only without the practice that Shino has and with at least twice as much sadness. "You can't get that deep inside a person's head without growing to love them."

It doesn't sound right as soon as it's left his mouth - it's true, of course, but it's the circumstance that throws him. He thinks of clutching the space where Ovan used to be only just seconds before, closing his blurry eyes because to leave them open meant facing the fact that he was no longer there.

He can see him now, perfectly real if not perfectly healthy, sitting close enough to reach. And if he wanted, Ryou could close the space between them and discover what that would have felt like to have grasped someone who wasn't going to disappear. It was difficult now, since Masato wasn't fading, wasn't saying goodbye, and Ryou couldn't feel Haseo's heartbeat like a drum in his brain, adrenaline-fast and terrified. It was different now that he could think about what might happen once they came together, what he might say.

He swallows thickly, saturated within the navy of Masato's eyes - Ovan's shape exactly, but darker, not so masked beneath untinted glasses - before it sinks in that Masato is staring silently back. Something sparks within him, angry and impatient, Haseo to the core, and it takes a moment to suppress it, the sputter and the bite that always came so easily when Ovan was being frustrating.

"I understand what you're describing." Masato says patiently. "Knowing a person so completely that to not love them is unthinkable. Of course you love her." It makes his stomach twist although Ryou's sure it really _shouldn't, _because everyone feels that way, he's sure, when they see him and Atoli wandering together, sharing whispers and smiles and time. Whatever expression he's making, Masato seems to take pain from it. He is unchanging for a long moment, breathing, and Ryou is beginning to wonder why it seems speech has become such a difficult task for him when he whispers "Aina has never known life without me, you see." and _oh_, that's why.

His sister. It feels precious, somehow, this tiny bit of Masato that he had kept hidden for so long. Ryou nods, which seems to relax him somewhat. Some of the tenseness eases from his jaw, seeps tension out of white knuckles. Ryou toys with his phone, waiting, trying not to think of Chigusa and yet thinking of nothing else. How they depend on each other, the two of them, baring old scars for the other to heal. But it's bizarre, imagining Ovan - great, brooding, untouchable Ovan - depending on anyone, especially someone as small and sweet as Aina.

But then again, that was always the problem, wasn't it? Ovan hiding his weaknesses from him, waiting until the very last minute to throw down his shield. "Do you mean, that's how you think me and Atoli are?" he ventures, dubious. "The way you see your sister?"

"I mean that I'm familiar with that sort of love," Masato says simply, his face very blank.

"What about you and Shino?" it spills from his mouth before he can stop it. Even after Shino has fallen into her coma he had never given their relationship much thought, but it seems now like a shadow that comes easily when called.

He nods quietly. "Of course, I love her too."

_Just not the way you might have thought. _Of course he does. It was never that he didn't care, just that he didn't show it. Ryou feels like Haseo again, data drained and dragged back to bare nothing, impossibly breakable under Ovan's jagged shadow as he whispers, "And what about me?"

If Haseo has taught him anything, it's that change can sneak up on you. He discovered it once in the data-streaked eyes of the Azure Knight, and once again when Shino had him, sweetly, to be honest. He had watched himself chase after a dead trail to end up cold and shaking in rebirth, knowing exactly what his new goals should be as perfectly as if they had been there all along.

Masato seems smaller when he speaks, confused and hesitant the way Ovan was never allowed to be. "I had a dream, once, that I told you about my life as if it were through the eyes of a Russian doll."

Ryou feels his mouth go dry. "You told me that." he says, hushed. "Only, it was while you were in your coma. When I was in The World. I figured it was in my head..."

Masato nods again at this, as if some part of him had already accepted impossibility as truth. "Do you remember the rest, Haseo?"

It's the name that gets him, as if it's the Ovan from the Forest of Pain that's here with him now, translucent and distant and smiling as if waking up at last from a deep, peaceful sleep. Ryou feels stupid somehow, a hopeful soul trying for the right answer again. "You said you were wrapped up in a sea of gray." He stares at the older man's profile, dark and thoughtful against the sun. "And that...that I was the only one."

"Well, then." Masato concludes, neatly. "There you are."

Ryou gets up very suddenly. Takes his forearm. Masato isn't turned away so it's easy, so easy, to fit into his arms and once he's there he only digs his nails in, gathers up fistfuls of his shirt and holds his breath because it's been such a long time coming. He topples a little at the force of it, Masato, maybe not unsuspecting but still weak from his long sleep, but then his arms go around Ryou and it's just as it was supposed to be, warm and safe and together like they were supposed to be before Ovan died.

He could count their heartbeats here, both of them, and it drives him crazy because Ovan's always driven him crazy, the way he makes him wait, leaves him burning or cold with rage. He wouldn't have to feel so frustrated if Masato hadn't been there, keeping secrets, using him, dancing just out of reach until Ryou's really starting to think maybe he'll never let go, just in case he decides to be an idiot again and erase himself from the world. From Haseo.

But they're here now. And once again Ovan's gutted him, left him feeling like the only thing remaining in a world of gray.

"You know, I actually trusted you." Ryou mumbles gruffy. "Back then. You were the only one left that I trusted. And you don't have to explain yourself," -Masato is already drawing a breath to interupt- "because I already know. I _know._ But. You can't blame me if I still want to punch you once, right?" He can feel the thin smile against his crown, not quite self-hating but close enough there that Ryou's next words, intended to come out like an accusation, instead sound too-small and nearly childlike. "...you hurt me, Ovan."

"I know."

"But I got one wish, after that stupid event. I didn't even ask for anything, just turned around and _you_ showed up."

"...I know."

"Yeah, yeah...of course you do. You always knew. You bastard, you always left before I could hit you."

Maybe he should have untangled himself from Masato by now. Maybe Masato was waiting for it. The fingers in his hair idle for a moment, curling. "I'm here, now." he points out, and Ryou wants to hate him so badly that it's like being player-killed again, out there in an open field with a thousand witty remarks all dried up on his tongue. He presses his face into the hollow of Masato's throat, presses his mouth there in a closed not-kiss. But Masato rests his head on the top of Ryou's and he can feel the flutter of his pulse there, not coma-weak but strong and a little too fast to be considered steady.

"I'm familiar with this sort of love," Masato says in a different voice, not his usual purr but low and rough like sand, only this time Ryou's been worn down and cracked open and rebuilt too many times not to know when to surrender.


End file.
